brain stimulation

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

The European Society for Brain Stimulation opposes EU reclassification of TMS and tDCS, claiming a flawed safety assessment

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Man­i­festo: Oppo­si­tion to EU Reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS equip­ment to Class III devices based on flawed evi­dence (Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stimulation):

It has recent­ly come to our atten­tion that the EU has reclas­si­fied the NIBS equip­ments includ­ing rTMS and tDCS, as Class III devices, the cat­e­go­ry of high­est risk, sim­i­lar to inva­sive treat­ments, such as deep-brain stim­u­la­tion implants. This reclas­si­fi­ca­tion has a major impact on our field, not only for man­u­fac­tur­ers, but also for researchers, clin­i­cians and patients and we judge this reclas­si­fi­ca­tion a mis­take. First, the evi­den­tial basis for this change is a flawed assess­ment of the safe­ty lit­er­a­ture. Sec­ond, the con­sul­ta­tion process has occurred with­out input from spe­cial­ists or stake­hold­ers pro­fes­sion­al­ly active in the field of NIBS. Nei­ther the ESBS nor Nation­al Soci­eties of Brain Stim­u­la­tion nor indi­vid­ual experts with­in the Euro­pean NIBS com­mu­ni­ty were con­sult­ed on this change. [Read more…] about The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

Combined tDCS neurostimulation and cognitive training found to improve working memory among older adults–especially those with lower starting capacity

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Giv­ing mem­o­ry a lift: Can games and brain stim­u­la­tion do it? (Med­ical­New­sTo­day):

A person’s work­ing mem­o­ry may decline with age or if they have demen­tia, Parkinson’s dis­ease, or have had a stroke. When this occurs, the loss can affect their day-to-day qual­i­ty of life, turn­ing even sim­ple tasks into often-demor­al­iz­ing chal­lenges. [Read more…] about Com­bined tDCS neu­rostim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing found to improve work­ing mem­o­ry among old­er adults–especially those with low­er start­ing capacity

Study: Personalized, closed-loop neuromodulation can (one day) become a “pacemaker for the brain”

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Click image above to watch 2‑minute video explain­ing the study

Treat­ing Severe Depres­sion with On-Demand Brain Stim­u­la­tion (UCSF press release):

UCSF Health physi­cians have suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed a patient with severe depres­sion by tap­ping into the spe­cif­ic brain cir­cuit involved in depres­sive brain pat­terns and reset­ting them using the equiv­a­lent of a pace­mak­er for the brain.

“This study points the way to a new par­a­digm that is des­per­ate­ly need­ed in psy­chi­a­try,” said Andrew Krys­tal, PhD, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try and mem­ber of the UCSF Weill Insti­tute for Neu­ro­sciences. “We’ve devel­oped a pre­ci­sion-med­i­cine approach that has suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged our patient’s treat­ment-resis­tant depres­sion by iden­ti­fy­ing and mod­u­lat­ing the cir­cuit in her brain that’s unique­ly asso­ci­at­ed with her symp­toms.” [Read more…] about Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”

Neuromodulation developer Halo Neuroscience closes its doors; Flow Neuroscience acquires assets

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Flow acquires brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­er Halo (Med­ical Device Network):

Flow Neu­ro­science has acquired the assets of brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science to advance its research into depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health dis­or­der treat­ments. [Read more…] about Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science clos­es its doors; Flow Neu­ro­science acquires assets

Air Force announces research platform to harness closed-loop neurotechnology and accelerate learning “on the fly”

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U.S. Air Force illustration/Richard Eldridge

Air Force Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Part­ner­ship Aims to Accel­er­ate Learn­ing (Mil­i­tary Spot):

The Indi­vid­u­al­ized Neur­al Learn­ing Sys­tem, or iNeu­raLS, is a new aug­ment­ed learn­ing plat­form that will enable rapid learn­ing by closed-loop mod­u­la­tion of cog­ni­tive states dur­ing skill acqui­si­tion. Essen­tial­ly, the AFRL team seeks to devel­op a capa­bil­i­ty that will give Air­men the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly acquire knowl­edge and skills on the fly through direct brain inter­faces with the help of neurotechnologies…

[Read more…] about Air Force announces research plat­form to har­ness closed-loop neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and accel­er­ate learn­ing “on the fly”